The legislative chamber of Uzbek Oliy Majlis approved a program at the plenary session on Friday to create jobs and provide people with them in 2013, the lower chamber of the parliament said today.

According to the program, around 972,700 new jobs are planned to be created. They will appear after commissioning new large industrial facilities, renovating and expanding existing enterprises, further promoting the development of small business, private and family business, the service sector, home-based jobs etc.

A significant part of home-based jobs will be organized in the regions, which are the traditional centers of national craftsmanship - Namangan, Ferghana, Andijan, Samarkand and Bukhara regions.

Special attention will be paid to 28 remotely located, as well as mountain, border areas with insufficient development of production and the social sphere, as well as high unemployment level. At least 126,000 new jobs are planned to be created there in 2013 or 5 per cent more than in 2012.

Another priority of the program is the employment of vulnerable categories of citizens. There are at least 100,000 jobs for people with disabilities and others within the program.

An important direction of the program is the employment of graduates of educational institutions. It is planned to employ more than 500,000 graduates of professional colleges in 2013 through vacant jobs. At least 900 job fairs will be held in cities and regions.

Moreover, commercial banks plan to continue the practice of providing graduates of colleges and universities with preferential micro-loans to organize own business.

The commercial banks plan to allocate 5.1 trillion soum loans to support small business and private entrepreneurship. Concessional loans will be mainly used to finance the projects aimed at creating jobs in remote rural areas and areas with a tense situation in the labor market.

The employment program approved by the Legislative Chamber will be submitted to the upper house of the parliament - the Senate. The program will be discussed in the Senate on December 5 - 6.

According to the employment program for 2012, around 967,500 new jobs are planned to be created. Around 773,000 jobs were created in January - September 2012.

According to the official statistics, the number of citizens registered in the employment bodies, as job seekers as of late September hit 18,000 compared to
24,100 as of 2011.

The number of unemployed, defined by "Methods of calculating the unemployed" approved by the government hit 621,700 in January - September 2012 or 4.8 per cent of the economically active population.